Federal Judges Allow Map to Stand Despite Harms to Black Voters

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Nov. 26, 2025) — A panel of federal judges will not block the North Carolina General Assembly’s latest congressional map, which changes Congressional Districts 1 and 3 and disproportionately impacts Black voters, according to an opinion released Wednesday. 

In October, lawmakers took the unprecedented step of redrawing the two congressional districts to influence the 2026 midterms — marking the first known time they’ve done so without new Census data or a court order prompting them to redistrict. 

The Wednesday opinion denying a preliminary injunction in the case was signed by Judges Allison J. Rushing, Richard E. Myers II, and Thomas D. Schroeder.

Read the full opinion here. 

Individual voters and two pro-democracy groups challenged the redraw, arguing that legislators only picked up the pen to redraw lines to burden voters based on past voting history. They claimed this amounted to First Amendment retaliation against those voters — particularly Black voters in northeastern North Carolina — for their protected political expression.   

The Plaintiffs also argued that legislators’ remarks about wanting to defeat a “sue-until-blue scheme” revealed retaliation for the earlier lawsuit challenging the 2023 districts, which had been brought by the NAACP North Carolina State Conference, Common Cause, and several affected voters. They contended the new redraw undermined their ability to get a final ruling on their challenge to Congressional District 1. 

“We’re disappointed in the court’s decision today. This ruling gives blessing to what will be the most gerrymandered congressional map in state history, a map that intentionally retaliates against voters in eastern North Carolina for supporting a candidate not preferred by the majority party,” said Bob Phillips, Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina. “I believe the lawmakers responsible for the map and for this misguided ruling know they are wrong and will be judged accordingly. Meanwhile, our fight for fair maps continues, and our fight for voters living in these distorted districts will carry on, with more energy than ever. Ultimately, we the people will prevail.” 

“These mid-decade redistricting battles are tearing our democracy apart; we need the courts more than ever to enforce the protections of the Constitution to protect voters and the right to dissent,” said Hilary Harris Klein, lead counsel for Plaintiffs and Senior Counsel for Voting Rights with Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “If politicians want to keep their majority in any legislative body, our Constitution should require them to do it by earning votes, not by silencing the voices of communities they disagree with after every election.” 

This decision follows a November 20, 2025, opinion in which the Court rejected challenges to the 2023 congressional and senate plans as diluting the power of Black voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Court found “it is undisputed that [B]lack-preferred candidates are less successful under the 2023 [congressional] plan than under the 2022 [congressional] plan,” but that partisanship explained the legislators’ intent and the resulting vote dilution.  The Court cited heavily to the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP, which raised the standard plaintiffs have to meet to show racial discrimination in voting. In her Alexander dissent, Justice Kagan warned the decision created “special rules to specially disadvantage suits to remedy race-based redistricting” by telling legislators it is “easy enough to cover your tracks in the end.”

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Southern Coalition for Social Justice, founded in 2007, partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities in the South to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights through the combination of legal advocacy, research, organizing, and communications. Learn more at southerncoalition.org and follow our work on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.